Red Hat and Docker Collaborate

Collaboration with Red Hat is important for a number of reasons, including:

Driving compatibility with the most widely deployed Linux distributions

Enabling integration with one of the most prominent and important PaaS solutions

Collaborating with the most prominent, pure open source company

First, it is critically important for us to make Docker work seamlessly with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and related Linux distributions, such as Fedora. This is the #1 requested enhancement for Docker, and is obviously a major concern for people who want to deploy Docker in mainstream production environments. Our teams have been working together to package Docker for Fedora in time for the next release of Docker (0.7). Red Hat and dotCloud are planning to make Docker available for all Fedora users with upcoming releases, and are doing the initial packaging work that will ultimately enable Docker to more easily build and deploy on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

This has involved a number of important technical challenges, including:

Filesystem dependencies. We have worked together to remove Docker’s dependency on AuFS by developing a new approach to provisioning based on the device-mapper thin provisioning technology included in Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and other distributions. This approach provides the same elegant user experience in a way that is more compatible with upstream kernel versions.

Collaboration on container provisioning: Red Hat has enabled libvirt, the open source virtualization API project, as an option for creating containers within Docker. This approach will enable users to take full advantage of the robust networking capabilities of libvirt while maintaining the user experience of Docker provisioning.

Second, as we discussed in an earlier blog post, as the industry matures, Docker is committed to supporting a broad variety of Platform as a Service solutions. In addition to the dotCloud PaaS, we are excited that projects such as Deis, Flynn, and Voxoz have chosen to build on top of Docker.

So,it is especially exciting to see one of the most prominent and important PaaS solutions, Red Hat’s Openshift, driving deep integration with Docker. We are big fans of OpenShift, and are excited for what this can mean for users and in terms of rapid application development and deployment and cross platform compatibility. By harmonizing Docker and OpenShift Gears, and by integrating Docker with OpenShift’s cartridge model for application orchestration, we’ll combine the power of Docker with OpenShift’s ability to describe and manage multi-container applications, enabling customers to build more sophisticated applications with maximum portability.

Finally, we are thrilled—in general—to be working with Red Hat. As the most prominent, pure open source company, they are an inspiration to open source startups like us. As Red Hat is a leader in Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora), middleware (JBoss), virtualization (KVM), storage (Gluster), PaaS (Openshift), and now IaaS (OpenStack), we hope to find multiple productive ways of working together for the benefit of users.

If you are one of the 150+ active community contributors to Docker, you have probably seen the exceptional amount of recent activity by members of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora and OpenShift teams. (If not, see the activity here They have been true open source partners, working hand in hand with us to address some of the most important technical challenges.

Red Hat and Docker Collaborate

Ben Golub is the CEO of Docker, a role he has held since April of 2013. Prior to Docker, Golub was CEO of Gluster, the open source, scale out storage company, which was successfully acquired by Red Hat in 2011. Before joining Gluster, Golub was CEO of social media pioneer Plaxo, which was acquired by Comcast in 2008. Golub also spent eight years at VeriSign, Inc., serving as Chief Marketing Officer, as Senior Vice President of the security and payments business, and as General Manager of VeriSign's managed security services business.
Ben tweets at @golubbe.

Luke

Nice timing guys. RedHat is presenting at our local AWS User Group this Wednesday (www.awsug.org.au) on Openshift and I believe they are going to be mentioning docker as well. Looking forwards to see how they fit together. Keep up the good work guys.

Just to complement the information about Opensource PaaSs, Tsuru is a Opensource PaaS – ready to go – that uses docker as provisioner of containers. This collaborative work with redhat is a very good news for docker and it’s a good sign that we made a good decision here choosing docker. Well done guys!